How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran, book review: Debut novel has heart, but lacks polish

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. If you grew up reading Smash Hits, quoting Blackadder at length in the playground and calling people “milady” for no clear reason, it may well be a cornerstone of your own sense of humour; even if you didn’t, you’ll recognise it, and know it to be at once charming and a bit exhausting. It’s not just by noting the arduousness of writing a book that Moran pre-empts negative reviews - the whole story ultimately argues against the sort of self-protective cynicism that has us sniping at one another’s best efforts, an argument that is even more relevant to today’s culture of offhand online character assassination as to Moran’s 90s context. Readers with knowledge of Moran’s own background may notice family resemblances between her and Johanna, though an Author’s Note strenuously denies that this is autobiography. The book feels even more like thinly-veiled memoir when Johanna dips out of her teenage memories to offer an observation from a current perspective – a reference to something having been “so popular in the 90s”, or a comparison to the experience of childbirth.